New Orleans: An Unamerican Place and Its Physical
Spirits
Stephen M. Johnson
"New Orleans: An Unamerican Place and its Physical
Spirits" first appeared in (and was copyrighted by) Studies in
Popular Culture XVI.1 (Oct 93), 53-60. It shows how key features of
this unique local culture derive from the physical dimensions of its place,
where the flesh becomes spirit. It is contribution to Afro-Caribbean religion
studies and African Diaspora studies. For more on how the daily, "secular"
culture of New Orleans functions as unannounced but quite effective tribal
religion for the inhabitants, see the author's "Popular Culture as
Religion: Faiths by Which We Naturally Live" For more on other forms
of "secular" culture working as their adherents' natural religion
or life operating system, see the author's forthcoming American Matters:
Civil Religion and Other Natural Faiths by Which We Live.
The text is the city which crescent-molds its characters, who live
and breathe only in that embrace. They be in the living place of
New Orleans as completely as fish are in water. Like African tribal members,
they are their traditional selves only there; elsewhere they are in exile,
unable to feel and think in their native ways.1 And the local history and
culture are themselves immersed in the physical realities of the place.
Within their hometown, traditional natives of New Orleans cannot answer
tourists' directional queries with the language of north-south, east-west.
They do not know these terms at home, however well they may employ them
about (or in) their places of exile. At home they think-feel and speak
in the termina or directions of "downtown" (the French Quarter)
or "uptown" (the "American" side of Canal Street),
of the "river side" or the "lake side" of town.2 The
only traditional use of the universal terms in the upriver seaport city
is to "the west bank" of the Mississippi. Everything across the
vast river is of course the west bank, but this river that crescent-shapes
the city's main avenues, while defining natives' mental compass points,
actually flows due north in front of the French Quarter. Looking across
it from the foot of Canal or from Jackson Square, you can every dawn behold
the sun rising -- from the west bank! No, the usual spatial coordinates
do not apply within the living place of New Orleans.
Within the river's embrace, the city's topography is simply flat. Literally,
physically, utterly flat. Apart from the levee, up whose grand rise generations
have climbed to picnic, down whose river side they have run to beat their
feet on the Mississippi mud, New Orleans has no elevation. In some old
neighborhoods, indeed, there still are no curbs -- no division between
street and yard save the shells or paving of the one, the grass of the
other. One result is that somehow the sky seems also flat and close over
the residents. Regardless how many towers of modern commerce arise, the
city will remain horizontal. So the children could know what one is, there
was piled up in Audubon park the famous "monkey hill." The only
place for the kids literally to play "king of the hill," it was
a gently, perfectly contoured round mound, fifteen feet high.
In this world of no altitude, of flat Earth, dimensionality is felt
only, but vividly, in the other elements -- in air, fire, and water. The
Air is tangible, close, usually hot, always scented. The scents vary by
neighborhood: Carrollton by riverbend wet with old oak and sweet magnolia;
the Quarter slightly acidic and sometimes smoky (though once suffused with
fishmarket smells); lakeside lightly salted. Everywhere the earth itself
breathes. Going out by pirogue into the surrounding swampland still just
minutes away, one sees, feels, becomes one with mother's brown body bubbling
gasses. Sliding past snakes in the bayou, catching alligator's blinkless
stare as he silently sinks underwater, you come to what could be a plain,
but is marshland, with plant-floating clear water some places only two
inches deep. There, like some Gulliver upon a giant's body, you see and
feel the rhythmic bubbling exhalations from the earth's pores. There is
no sound, but she is always breathing.
The Fire of New Orleans flares polymorphously -- in the earth's
gaseous eruptions, literally flaming out in natural and industrial outspouting;
from above, slowroasting all under semitropical sun, teaching the natives
slow rhythms of movement and speech; and in the spice of the city's food
and music. Architecture moderates the sunbaking, both in the Quarter's
thick walls, high ceilings, and ceiling fans, and in the neighborhoods'
"shotgun" (rooms-in-a- straight-row) structures allowing breezes
to blow through the house from frontdoor through the back.3 Taste endlessly
varies the heat of the food and the music. Spicy, like many cuisines close
to equator, the Cajun and Creole run from the smoky dark brown roux out
of which genuine gumbo grows, to the sweeter heat of tomato-dominant shrimp-or-whatever
"Creole"; from the brackish tartness of crawfish etouffe, to
the layered smokiness of andouile sausage. As with their foods, so in their
music, New Orleanians' passions run a wide spicy gamut: from fiery "hot
jazz" to smoldering blues; from party Dixieland to soulful r&b;
from rolling New Orleans piano to the raucous accordian, fiddle and scrubboard
of bayou zydeco. The musicians bury their dead with brass-band gentleness,
bassdrum tolling the slow beat of "A Closer Walk" to the cemetary,
but playing (and the "second-line" dancing) fierce and fast coming
back.
In this place whose earth is six feet below sea level, the dead must
be buried above ground, lest they float away. The resultant "cities
of the dead" are just another faubourg (neighborhood or district)
in this land where all the other elements are transformed by ever- dominant
Water.3 Water three-dimensionally embraces the sub-sea-level
earth, drenching it and the air with humidity when not drowning it in heavy
rainstorm. The rainstorms come suddenly and powerfully heavy (once an inch
in five minutes), pounding flat sidewalks of Vieux Carre and flat earth
of neighborhoods, drenching you with all the water in the world, then just
quitting. Suddenly you and the dirt and the sidewalks are visibly steaming
in the shining sun.
Steamingly sunlit, wetly battered, or draped with long ghostly drizzles,
this place "where nothing ever stops growing" birthed the blues
and jazz. No accident, according to world-traveller and longtime resident
Andrei Codrescu, reflecting on their organic connectedness. "Jazz.
. . how much rain there is in that sweet native form," he perceived.
Here where "life swarms in every puddle, people themselves fill up
with poetry, music, melancholy thoughts, and memories. There are certain
cities in the world whose character is revealed by rain. New Orleans is
the best of them."4
The city was settled in primordial malarial swamp, where it long endured
recurrent deadly sieges of that disease and of yellow fever (as well as
of cholera and diphtheria). It has its most rainy season in January-February,
followed by a month of March spring with exploding azaleas, then summer
from April into October (all fiercely punctuated by those summer storms),
followed by a temperate November-December. Hurricanes are more frequent
than winter or snow, and every hurricane that approaches threatens quite
total disaster. Lucky so far, spared a direct hit even by 1969's deadly
Camille, the town and surrounding area would have been devastated had she
come in just a few miles more west than she did. The destruction from such
a landfall by any major hurricane would be unimaginable, with noplace for
the waters to run off; and there would be no getting most people out of
town. The two major roads that exit inland would be choked by any mass
attempt at evacuation, which the natives would never resort to anyway;
and the same 25-foot levees that keep out the river would hold in all floodwaters
blown from the Gulf through the lake by a hurricane adding its own intense
rains.5
New Orleans has over time filled up most of its lake-connected waterways,
which once had served as commercially important "canals," but
originally were the natural bayous that further enclosed the place as a
peninsula, almost an island. Though Coleridge did not know it, the words
"water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink" most accurately
refer to her hometown, according to local poet Quovadis Jax. The Mississippi
waters are drunk only after laboriously being processed into what she calls
"polite chemicals." But she and fellow New Orleanians, still
surrounded by the river, the lake, Bayou St. John, and numerous swamps,
are as she says "defined by our waterpumps, levees, canals, and fear
of hurricanes. . . . Get a good strong hurricane wind in, the rest would
be history."6 Until then, the people live their lives by
stressing its enjoyment, full enjoyment of everything physical, at a pace
subtropically sustainable for life.
Sprung from union of European with African, the people of this place
are Caribbean. Their selves and style of living transformed by the unique
physical dimensions of New Orleans, the Creoles' resultant sense and sensiblities
have been transforming the American immigrants from upriver ever since
the "Kaintucks" long ago barged in. As Greek culture conquered
its Roman conquerors, the Creoles' culture surely absorbed those ambitious
Americans who first stole their city economically (while they stayed elegantly
busy with Culture). Slow but sure, their city has been thus transforming
its immigrants ever since.7 Oblivious to its neighbors and their ambitions,
unique insular New Orleans could never (nor would!) have become a Houston,
Atlanta, or Miami. But when those places were still parts of Indian trails,
New Orleans had already been European-sophisticated and civilized for more
than a century, old and wise in the ways of opera and fashion, fine art
and blooded horses, education and sin of all kinds.
The active and venerated spirits of the place are as innumberably many
(and as compatible) as those of Asia, riotously including Catholic saints,
Marie Laveau the voodoo queen (mother and daughter, they were two), departed
music masters such as Professor Longhair, animals like crawfish and alligator,
trees like the sassafras, and vegetables like okra and tomato (whose feast
is celebrated with a parade in early June). Any day of a weekend that isn't
already something's "festival" will be next year. Time itself
has become shape-shifting kaleidoscope, not of mere "partying",
but of festivals, as this raucously polytheistic culture celebrates life
-- sweet, precious, precarious life -- to the liturgical rhythm and mythic
expression of blues and jazz, funky r&b and zydeco. "Laissez les
bon temps roulez, cher," because lifetimes are too short, with sad
times and death too sure. The dreadful periodic visitations of malaria
and yellow fever have ceased, but hurricanes and the rest still come calling.
"Let the good times roll, darlin'" is motto (in the French) because
its spirit lives, transforming even National Football League games in the
superdome (where the spectators' experience is not so American as anywhere
else, and where many events not remotely connected with sports are also
held). Most intense of the festivals is Jazz Fest (officially "The
Jazz and Heritage Festival"), running from April's last through May's
first weekend. Music is everywhere in town and on the river the evenings
of the week thus sandwiched, but on those two weekends the action is out
at the Fairgrounds. There, dozens of food booths serve hundreds of artisans
and craftspeople, all bathed in the countless musics of thousands of musicians.
Oldest and most important of the festivals, of course, is Mardi Gras,
the name which to natives signifies three concentric timeframes. Beginning
on Twelfth Night (January 6th, "Epiphany" of the Christian calendar,
when the magi [or "three kings"] discovered the baby Jesus),
the Carnival season (carni vale , "farewell to the flesh")
lasts until the first moment of Ash Wednesday (beginning of the penitential
season). Many New Orleanians will get their Lenten ashes in church that
morning, but all will have participated frequently in Carnival, which some
years lasts longer than Lent itself. Throughout the weeks after Twelfth
Night, dozens of (annual) formal balls and countless (weekly) informal
parties are held. For members of the Krewes, their annual ball is highlight
of their Society year; in social New Orleans, people's status is determined
by their krewe, their club, and their credit, in that order. For ordinary
young people, the weekly "kingcake" parties, in living rooms,
yards, or garages, are the best party and dancing season of the year (and
next week's party is by whoever gets the slice of kingcake with the litte
baby baked into it).
Eleven days before Ash Wednesday, Carnival season enters the more intense
and more public stage focussed by the dozens of Krewes who mount parades.
These weekend days and weekday evenings feature multiple parades (followed
by their Krewes' formal balls and the informal postparade partying of onlookers).
Only after all this does Carnival reach its third and climactic stage,
Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday") itself, the day when onlookers as
well as the many parades' members are costumed. In truth, there are no
onlookers that day, as every one participates, the costumed playing all
possible roles in their dressing up, and in spontaneous dancing with paradeside
strangers to the endless music from bands and nearby homes. Everything
is possible, as all structure and strictures on interacting are forgotten,
paradeside and into the night.8
For Mardi Gras day and night, all secular ("real world")
time and cares are forgot, all participants caught up in mythic time and
identities. As any Eliadean historian of religions will tell you, the power
of religions' holy days and places is their powerfulness for re- present
-ing mythic meaning and story, values and identity.9 As
any New Orleanian may confess, life's real meaning and value are those
made present, made real (real-ized), precisely in their celebration.
"The play[ing] is the thing," dear Will (and why not dress as
Shakespeare next year, bringing him to the party). We are the roles
we play, as Asia's gods have always modelled (and countless avatars of
them become real on this day). The "once upon a time" of fairy
tale and myth has always been "both then and always now" a kind
of time. In New Orleans this is all the time -- and that
is what Mardi Gras celebrates, when all together play , thus
making believe.
As through the year, however, during Carnival and even on Mardi Gras
day, celebrants share the spirit and occasion variously, as befits members
of a caste-culture: from the old elite white Creoles of the Boston Club
to their cousins of the old Creole high-yellow society, from working Blacks'
clubs "dressing Indian" and competing in dance as groups, to
working-class whites costuming variously and partying individually.10
As to the Creoles, those born in the late 30's and 1940's are the first
generation of black and white Creole society not to grow up personally
knowing their white and black cousins, as mid-century segregation took
nasty turns.11 On both sides, old class standards prevail: the
most traditional of white Creoles still more respect Creoles of color than
low-class whites no matter how monied; and many Creole parents of color
keep their children to their own kind when it comes to dating, forbidding
their teenagers to get thus involved with whites or Blacks.
Meanwhile, all New Orleanians share their unique space and ways, their
food and festivals and music. The local blues and Dixieland and other jazz,
New Orleans r&b and later "funk" and now zydeco from the
surrounding swamps, all are pervasive. Imbibed with the scented air, the
music embodies life's rhythms, providing dancing and listening, mythic
explanation and ritual sharing of all emotions. Functionally, it is all
"holy" music, natural as a lullaby, automatic as cries of pain
or pleasure.
The holiest sacrament of all, and the hottest object of passion is
food, whose special pride of place and function subordinates even sexual
communion. "Sex is good too, cher," but that's for before, or
between, or after the times for food. Influenced by the Indians then native
to Louisiana, the urbane Creole and the country Cajun cuisines long ago
merged with each other, then absorbed latecomers' ethnic tastes into the
unique cooking of New Orleans. In New Orleans food -- its unique preparation,
its enjoyment, and its discussion -- is not so much eaten as lived.
In the culture of the crescent city, then, food and live music, the
most momentary and ephemeral of goods, are the most prized "material"
expressions. Of the more durable goods, most valued are the places where
the same food and music are served and enjoyed: from Galatoire's to Arnaud's
to the neighborhood tavern, from Maison Bourbon to Tipitina's to the Maple
Leaf, and all the others, then always back again to Benny's or beignets
and coffee by river's edge. Passing open bars with live music at dawn,
visitors wonder whether they just opened or never closed. Acknowledging
there are those who solemnly declare their bodies to be "temples,"
local Joe Cahn reassures his students: "My body . . . is a
playground."12 However all, this town's master chefs and
cooks, its musicians and singers are the real priests and priestesses,
the preachers and shamans of a people whose functionally most sacred places
are not its many churches, but its restaurants and clubs.
Thus, as daily lived, the operative religion of New Orleans is its
mores, participation in its culture; and that culture is everyway
embedded in the physical place whereby it was formed. Like classic primal
religions, this place's culture is a "nature-religion." It does
not ethically equip its people for changing other societies. It does give
them their tribe, and ways for following the ancestors, for hearing their
voices and working out whatever-all that means for each one now. Thus each
member of the tribe can find his or her real and primal self, reaching
at-one-ment among the many selves who constitute each person. The very
physical culture and spirits of New Orleans empower its people's atonement
with their own earth and air, fire and water.
Notes
1 For more on the analogy to African tribal religions, see
the second (the autobiographical) part of my "Religion as Culture?
-- Three Varieties" paper, presented at the 1992 (Louisville) national
meeting of the Popular Culture Association.
2 In the 1970's, following the completion of Interstate 10,
there developed a large area of suburban expansion (lakeside, and northeast
of old downtown) known as "New Orleans East". Even that wording
seems to have functioned for natives simply as a proper noun, without directional
significance. By sheer repetition, and because one obviously has to drive
through "New Orleans East" to get to the Mississippi Gulf Coast,
there may now be a generation conscious of the name's directional bearing.
But beware: "New Orleans East" (like the state of Mississippi)
is much more north than east of downtown. Until disproved by some
empirical study, assume the functional meaning of "New Orleans East"
still to be simply "the opposite side of town from Metairie and Kenner."
Across Lake Ponchartrain meanwhile (halfway to inland Mississippi via due
north), residents of the now built-up area formerly called "across
the lake" find themselves referred to by the realtors as "northshore"
residents.
3 On a perfectly dry day, the city's 22 pumping stations
pump out seventeen million gallons of water. In addition to that, at full
strength, they can handle two inches of rain an hour; anything beyond that
produces instant flood.
4 "New Orleans Jazzfest '92," hosted by Delfeayo
Marsalis, Michael Murphy Productions, from New Orleans radio WWNO. This
two-hour distillation, made available from WGBH of Boston, was widely broadcast
by National Public Radio.
5 The levees' protection against Mississippi floods gained
backup with the upriver completion of the Bonnet Carre Floodway between
the river and Lake Pontchartrain. But against hurri- canes, especially
any coming in from the east as did Camille, there is no defense. The most
intense ever for its size, with barometric pressure down to 26.73, that
storm's 200+ mph winds hit the Mississippi coastline with 18.5' waves and
still drove Gulf waters twenty miles west into Lake Pontchartrain (the
northern border of New Orleans, as well as of Metairie and Kenner). See
"New Orleans and Her River," National Geographic 139.2, 158-161.
6 Quovadis Jax, on "New Orleans Jazzfest '92."
7 "Creole" here follows the New Orleans meaning
of descended from the founding French and/or Spanish (rather than Americans).
Because many of them produced offspring with both free Blacks and slaves,
there are white and colored Creole aristocracies, the latter of whom sharply
distinguish themselves from other Blacks.
8 Outside of New Orleans, many small towns of Acadia (formerly
isolated "Cajun country") retain older, more intricately meaningful
(very structured) carnival customs from medieval Europe. See Pat Mire's
forthcoming PBS television documentary, "Dance for a Chicken: Inside
the Prairie Cajun Mardi Gras." This is summarized in Mire, "Dance
for a Chicken," Cultural Vistas: Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities,
winter 1992, 16-19, 37-43.
9 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, Harcourt
Brace, 1959.
10 For marvelous paper and slide show of this fascinating
tradition, see Michael P. Smith, "Traditional African-American Freedom
Celebrations in New Orleans," Toronto PCA (March, 1990).
11 Jeremy Adams, oral interview during American Academy
of Religion annual meeting in New Orleans, November 19, 1990.
12 While teaching the daily three-hour cooking class at
his New Orleans School of Cooking.